Courtesy of the filmmakers.
Jerry and Patty Wetterling
A new documentary about the abduction of Jacob Wetterling and the far-reaching implications of the case is being finalized, and the filmmakers launched a GoFundMe campaign to bring on an editor to finish the project.
“I’m a Minnesota kid. I grew up in Minnetonka, and I was 14-years-old in 1989 when Jacob was abducted,” filmmaker Chris Newberry says. “It really affected me. I remember when the news broke, and how heart-wrenching and frustrating it was in those early days not knowing what happened to Jacob.”
The film is tentatively scheduled for a mid-2020 debut. In 2014, 25 years after the abduction while the case was still cold, Jacob’s family started a billboard campaign to drum up new leads in the case, when Newberry realized nobody had done a proper, longform documentary about the story. After meeting with the Wetterling family, the crew spent four years filming the project.
Courtesy of the filmmakers.
Chris Newberry with Jacob Wetterling's Family
“We wanted to do something that honored Jacob’s legacy,” Newberry said. “We’ve gone through this cultural shift in how Americans approach parenting, so that was one of the things that was most interesting to me.”
Newberry's last full-length project American Heart followed a health clinic in Minnesota that cares for refugees, and some of his short films aired nationally as part of the series Independent Lens and America ReFramed for PBS. Other filmmakers on the Jacob Wetterling project include Mark Steele, Ericka Ticknor, and Norah Shapiro, who recently filmed the Time for Ilhan documentary. Through a strange coincidence, work on the documentary began the same weekend that Danny Heinrich was arrested for the crime.
“There's so many dimensions to this story, that ten different documentary filmmakers or ten different journalists would tell ten different stories,” Newberry said. "In The Dark chose to focus on the failings of the investigation, and they certainly let the story breathe over several hours in their series. Even though we are covering the investigation, we're looking at the emotional impact, placing the story in the wider cultural moment."
Now removed from the media circus surrounding the original coverage of the case, the documentary is able to delve into the scope of what Jacob's story means in retrospect.
“This is an opportunity to show what we're fighting for. It speaks of the world that Jacob knew and believed in, because I refuse to let that go. I believe in it, I believe there are way more good people in the world than bad, and I believe that hope is real. Hope carried us, and it found Jacob,” Patty Wetterling said in a statement. “This is an opportunity to address what happened, what we all did with it, and all that we can do going forward."
In addition to the fundraiser, the filmmakers are touring five towns to debut the film trailer, with one at Sisyphus Brewing tonight.
